Afternoon Drive withJoanne Joseph

Last week I was in New York for the launch of the Samsung Note 8. The device is beautiful and impressive.

Samsung head of mobile started off by apologising for the Note 7 debacle and assured Samsung fans that the new Note 8 goes through an 8-Point Battery Safety Check. It involves putting batteries through extreme testing, inside and out, followed by a careful inspection by X-ray and the human eye to ensure the highest quality.

The Note 8 features a dual lens system that takes photographs simultaneously to provide the most in depth photography.

The S-Pen functionality has also been enhanced to give users more applications while using the S-Pen.

Another cool feature is App Pairing. The Note 8 will allow you to open two apps simultaneously side by side on the screen.

The Note 8 will be available in South Africa and will start at R19 000.

Doctors are often deluged by signals from charts, test results, and other metrics to keep track of.

It can be difficult to integrate and monitor all of these data for multiple patients while making real-time treatment decisions, especially when data is documented inconsistently across hospitals.

One team created a machine-learning approach called “ICU Intervene” that takes large amounts of intensive-care-unit (ICU) data, from vitals and labs to notes and demographics, to determine what kinds of treatments are needed for different symptoms.

The system uses “deep learning” to make real-time predictions, learning from past ICU cases to make suggestions for critical care, while also explaining the reasoning behind these decisions.